It's been another while!  Hope everybody had a nice holiday season.  I'd say mine has been relatively successful, I think!  Going back to work tomorrow, and not terribly sad about it, which is good.

Ludum Dare happened!  Voting is almost over, but you can play our game, Grow Your Love, here:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=7285

LD was pretty great, though I have to say this is probably the most I've ever worked for an LD jam, phew!  I skipped out on FNW again (a great choice) and slogged through the jam along with my partner in crime; we're both pretty happy with what came out of it in the end.  I'll be writing a full post-mortem on that after the official results come out (in a day or two).

Pet Furball has been doing great!  Via Apple's analytics it seems that it's already gotten 2.7k downloads on iOS, which is quite awesome actually, much bigger than we ever expected for such a small project.  Hooray!

Christmas came and went, and although I felt like I was more behind than =ever= this year, everything ended up working out pretty well in the end!  I've only got a couple more letters that I still have on my hands to send off, but all in all it was definitely a mission success.  I ended up getting some great gifts as well, including some much-appreciated items off of my wishlist, hooray!

I planned to work on Zenith Fighter a little more than I have been, but I started up again yesterday and put in some good hours for it; it's really coming along now!  I've got the beginnings of a simple UI, player health and damage, and I'm beginning to solve some design problems that I was running into before as well.  Initially I was intending for ZF to be sort of a roguelike where you go from room to room, fighting monsters and such, but I realized that it would simplify things a lot as well as solve a bunch of issues if I just turned it into an arena-style game where you just fight waves of monsters in the same room.  This also makes the game simpler, which is really nice as well.

I finished my second playthrough of Undertale...(the **** ******** run), which was quite amazing!  It wasn't until the second playthrough, I think, that I really started to appreciate just how much hard work and labor must have went into this game; it's all very well done and executed and there are a lot of small details everywhere that must have really taken a lot of time to get right.  I don't think I'll really be writing spoilery in-depth thoughts on how I felt about it (I already did so for my first playthrough), but I was definitely very emotionally impacted, to the point of tears; I really felt a very strong emotional connection to these characters in the game.  Undertale does a lot of things very well...I hesitate to say that it does them "right" for fear of implying that other games should do things in the same manner, but I think it's worthwhile to at least consider Undertale as a very important illustrative example of how to achieve certain things -- player agency and meaningful choices, how to really do a "new game plus", etc.  I'm not even talking about the major big picture things, but even the small details, like all of the little small trivial dialogue choices you make during the game -- they are all well crafted and having them in the game really adds to the experience of a second playthrough.  Again, not saying that that is something that every game should do, but I found it really awesome.  I don't think I'll be doing a third playthrough anytime soon; maybe someday perhaps, but definitely not soon.  Also, can I reiterate how impressed I am with the Undertale OST?  Simply great.

Watched the new Star Wars movie, which was quite enjoyable!  They did quite some things right and while it didn't blow my socks off (as Undertale did, muahaha), there were a couple of moments where it really felt great -- triumphant moments, nostalgic moments, funny moments, etc.

Also watched the 2nd Nanoha movie, finally (the one based on A's).  A great movie adaptation!  There were some differences from the original anime (I'm guessing one of them is more true to the manga) but for the most part I knew everything that was going to happen.  Still, it was a great watch.  Interestingly enough I felt a real pang of emotional pain when Vita first ambushed Nanoha and started beating her up...I can't tell if it was because I just like the Nanoha characters, or because I consider Vita and Nanoha to be such great friends (after having watched A's and StrikerS), or perhaps even because Undertale has caused me to really value friendship and compassion??  Also, omg, the scene where Fate grabs Nanoha's hand as they are walking into the distance...I feel like it's totally pandering to the fanbase, but wuahhh, that had me squealing...

Other things...I'm getting better and better at cooking, over time!  Finally figured out how to make decent pan sauces (that don't just taste like alcohol and cheap wine), which is great!  Also been experimenting with some other stuff, like cooking pork, soups, etc.  I'm also declaring myself to have mastered Jambalaya, as I made a really good one the other day with my friend, woohoo!